“A Faithful Provider” (Exodus 15:22 - 17:7) | 4/23/23
Exodus 15:22 - 17:7 | 4/23/23 | Will DuVal
A young woman brought her fiance home to meet her parents, and after dinner, her father invited the young man into his study for a drink so he could interrogate him:
“What are your plans?” the father asked.
“I am a Bible scholar,” the young man replied.
“So how will you provide for my daughter?” the father asked.
“I will study God’s word,” the young man answered, “and GOD will provide.”
“How about KIDS?” the father asked, “How will you provide for THEM, when kids come along?”
“I will devote myself to God’s word,” the boy repeated, “and God will provide.”
This line of questioning went on for some time. Eventually, the father gave up and went to bed.
When his wife asked, “How did it go, honey?”, the father replied:
“Well, the boy has NO job, no INCOME, and no PLANS… but the worst part is: he thinks I’M GOD!” (Joke adapted from: https://www.myenglishpages.com/english/joke.php?t=183 )
Sometimes God DOES use faithful parents… even IN-LAWS… as His means of providing for us, Amen? But one way or another, God is - as our title for this morning reminds us - “a Faithful Provider”. And God’s people - the Israelites - are going to see His faithful provision on full display this morning in Exodus chs15, 16, & 17; three chapters, with three different TESTS of Israel’s faithfulness to GOD, which result in three DEFEATS; Israel is gonna FAIL their test not once, not twice, but THREE times in this passage.
But the good news for Israel - and the good news for US today - is that in SPITE of their faith-LESS-ness… in spite of OUR infidelity, our God - Yahweh - is a promise-keeping, a COVENANT-keeping God. And one of God’s greatest promises in all His word is found in 2 Timothy 2:13: “if we are faithless, [Christ] remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” In Israel’s case, God had already promised to faithfully provide for them, so even when they forsake HIM here, God will not - He CAN not - forsake His people, because to do so would be to repudiate HIMSELF, and God does NOT disavow Himself. That is a GLORIOUS promise for unfaithful, adulterous people, like Israel… for unfaithful people like US, friends - you and ME. Praise God that if WE are faithless to Him, GOD remains faithful to US, for he cannot DISOWN himself!
And that’s the “Main Idea” of our passage this morning, the theme that unifies all 3 of these chapters and anecdotes we’re gonna read: that “Even when we are faithless, God remains our faithful Provider…”
Now, as we READ each of these 3 accounts, it’s easy to see on the surface that God is providing for Israel’s basic, PHYSICAL needs. They get thirsty; God provides WATER. They get hungry; God provides FOOD. They get thirsty AGAIN; God provides…? [You guessed it - water AGAIN.]
But as we look even closer, we’re gonna find that there’s even MORE going on here, that God is providing even MORE than what first meets the eye. That He’s providing not ONLY for Israel’s physical needs, but for their even deeper, SPIRITUAL need here as well. And God wants to do the same for you and me this morning, if we will RECEIVE His provision, God’s spiritual sustenance.
So let’s pick up the story in ch15, v22. Quick recap: Israel was ENSLAVED in Egypt for 4 centuries; Pharaoh REFUSED to let them go, until God sent 10 plagues and finally Pharaoh ordered them to leave. But then he changed his mind and chased AFTER them. So God SPLIT the Red Sea in two, to deliver His people, and destroy the Egyptians who chased after them. And last week, Israel SANG and danced for joy in the first half of ch15, but NOW we read in v22:
“Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. [which means? …BITTER! - you may recall Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi renaming herself “Mara” in Ruth ch1 b/c her life had become so “BITTER”; verse…] 24 And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.
Now, let’s pause there for a moment. 3 quick things to note here:
First, There is a recurring theme running throughout Scripture that whenever God CALLS someone, often He immediately sends them out into the WILDERNESS.
God called Abram to leave “Ur of Chaldeans” and travel west to Canaan, THROUGH the Arabian Desert.
God chose SAUL of Tarsus - saved him on the road to Damascus - and then immediately sent him out into Arabia, the desert.
Even JESUS, after his commissioning ceremony - his baptism - the Spirit immediately led Jesus into… the WILDERNESS.
Why? What is the significance, the symbolism of the WILDERNESS? Philip Ryken explains (414-5): “The wilderness is a HARD place. It is a place to meet with God, to be sure, and yet it is a difficult place… [of] TESTING… All our problems are meant to teach us to depend on GOD ALONE, to have absolute confidence in his faithfulness.”
In a word, the wilderness is a place of SANCTIFICATION, where God prunes, “proves”, and purifies us. He prunes us - he cuts out our dead parts, our sin - God proves us - he tests our genuineness, through trials - and then He PURIFIES us - he BURNS away any remaining sin with His “refining fire”. Now, if that all sounds PAINFUL, that’s cuz it usually IS! No one LOVES getting the SIN cut, tested and burned out of their SOUL, any more than you ENJOY having the doctor cut, test, and burn the CANCER out of your body… but it is absolutely IMPERATIVE nevertheless. It’s not fun, but it’s VITAL.
Second: we need to note the ORDER of events here: Israel was SAVED in ch14 - when God split the sea for them - and THEN they are sanctified here in ch15. That is ALWAYS the order, and it is SO significant. God doesn’t say “pass this test and THEN I’ll save you”... “PROVE yourself and THEN I’ll deliver you”; No- “While we were YET SINNERS, Christ died for us!” If you wait to come to Jesus until you’ve “cleaned up your ACT”, you will NEVER come; b/c He’s the CLEANER! That’s what Jesus specializes in: cleaning up MESSES. Let Him SAVE you, and THEN he can HELP you get your life straightened out.
Okay, so Israel was SAVED… now they’re being SANCTIFIED, tested; v25 says: “there [at Marah… God] tested them”.
And how’d they DO? Did they trust God to provide?
V24: “the people grumbled”. Now, we need to recognize here: there is nothing wrong with GRIEVING. In this life, we will suffer, and it is right and appropriate and BIBLICAL to GRIEVE our suffering.
It is GOOD to grieve; but it’s NOT okay to GRUMBLE.
It is FINE to CRY; but it’s NOT fine to COMPLAIN.
WAIL: yes; WHINE: no.
Anguish: sometimes; but NEVER ACCUSE.
That’s what the Israelites do here: they grumble and they ACCUSE Moses, once again, just like they did back in ch14, on the other side of the Red Sea: ““Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?”. Now they’re back at it again.
See, the REAL problem at Marah wasn’t the WATER. Sometimes life DOES get bitter, life WILL give you lemons. But the question is: what are you gonna DO with them? Do you let them make YOU bitter, like the Israelites here - the problem wasn’t the water; it was the bitterness in their HEARTS! (Ryken, 418).
Are you gonna let the “lemons” of life make you bitter… or will you make LEMONADE? How do you make lemonade? You just need a little SUGAR, right? Some SWEETNESS to counteract that bitterness. And speaking of “provision”, that’s EXACTLY what God provides in v25: “the Lord showed [Moses] a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became… sweet.”
WHY? Ryken explains (419): “The wood made the water sweet because it came from GOD’S tree. It reminds us of some of the other trees in Scripture: the life-giving tree in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:9), the tree of life in the New Jerusalem, with leaves for healing the nations (Rev 22:2), and especially the tree on which Christ was crucified - the tree that heals our bitter sin. God specializes in trees of healing.”
The “log” here in Exodus 15 foreshadowed that better “tree” to come, 1,500 years later, that has the miraculous healing power to take the most BITTER parts of our life and turn them SWEET - God’s greatest provision of ALL: the REDEMPTION He offers us at the CROSS. Where Jesus traded places with us, and took the bitterness of our sin upon himself, that he might instead offer us - PROVIDE us - the sweetness of salvation and eternal LIFE.
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But that’s not ALL God offers us. We read on, in v25:
There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, 26 saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”
The first form of SPIRITUAL sustenance God provides His people here is #1 - His LAW (15:22-27). His STATUTE, his RULE, his “VOICE” to guide them; his COMMANDMENTS.
Unfortunately, we sometimes have this negative stigma associated with God’s Law, as Christians, since PAUL will say in the New Testament that the Law is insufficient to SAVE us. Romans 3:20 warns that “no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.” And that’s true: the Law CANNOT save us; it can only highlight our NEED for a savior.
But Paul then goes ON to explain: this doesn’t make the Law “bad”; “NO!” he says in Romans 7:12 “the law is holy, and the commandment is… righteous and good.”
The problem’s not with God’s LAW; the problem’s with US - our inability, our unwillingness - our un-FAITH-fulness - to KEEP God’s Law.
But friends, God’s Law - His loving guidance, to teach us right from wrong - that is GOOD. And we cannot FORGET that, especially as we get ready to study God’s PROVISION of the Law together, the 10 Commandments, just a few weeks from now in Exodus ch20, and then ANOTHER 101 laws he gives Israel just AFTER that in chs 21-40 - we’ve gotta remember it’s one of God’s great GIFTS to His people: His LAW. That’s why the longest chapter in the entire BIBLE - Psalm 119 - is King David’s love song, not even so much about GOD, as it is about God’s LAW! “Your statutes are my delight… How I long for your precepts!... I delight in your commands - I love them.” Speaking of “sweetness”, David sings: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”. God’s Law is sweet, and good.
So God provides for us SPIRITUALLY through His Law, showing us how to truly live “the good life”, but he ALSO provides for us physically: life-giving WATER. Not just a LITTLE; God’s provision isn’t just “sufficient”. Look how the chapter closes, in v27: God provides LAVISHLY!
27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.
Being the Good Father He is, God provides GENEROUSLY, ABUNDANTLY for us, His children.
But like any good father, God ALSO provides DISCIPLINE when we need it. He loves us too much to let us STAY in Elim FOREVER; He wants us to GROW, to be sanctified. So in ch16 now, v1, we read:
They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. 2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
Talk about REVISIONIST HISTORY! They were SLAVES! I don’t remember any “meat pots” in chs1-13, do you? I remember a whole lot of BRICKS, and WHIPS and TEARS - I remember them eating “bitter HERBS”, at Passover, to remind them of their TEARS in Egypt. But now they’re romanticizing their time in Egypt. And Satan LOVES to get us stuck on that, doesn’t he?
“Why’d I ever start following Jesus; my sin wasn’t that bad… it was actually pretty FUN.”
“Why’d I ever get MARRIED? Man - remember that ONE girl I dated; now we had some FUN TIMES together…”
Because Satan may not be able to UN-SAVE us; He can’t RE-ENSLAVE us in Egypt, but He’d LOVE to keep us from ever reaching the Promised Land, because we’re stuck looking BACKWARD, engaging in revisionist history, forgetting all the reasons we were so DESPERATE to LEAVE our sin in the first place, and romanticizing it instead.
And speaking of ACCUSATIONS; look at what they try and pin on Moses here: they charge him with attempted MURDER! “You brought us out here to KILL us!”
But when we are faithless, GOD remains FAITHFUL; v4:
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” 8 And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”
9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’” 10 And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 11 And the Lord said to Moses, 12 “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am YHWH your God.’”
Let’s pause there for a second, because we see God’s SECOND form of spiritual provision taking shape here, namely: #2 - His TEST. God GIVES us His LAW, and then, secondly, He TESTS us - tests our obedience to His word, He tests our TRUST, our faith in His Law; v4: “I will test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.”
Specifically, here, God commanded them to gather this “bread from heaven” DAILY. Why? To test whether or not they’d TRUST God to PROVIDE it daily.
And then, v5, on the SIXTH day of the week, Friday, they were to gather TWICE as much. Why? As we’ll see, to TEST them AGAIN, whether or not they would TRUST God enough to REST on the Sabbath - KEEP his command, “walk in His law” - and trust God to provide enough for TWO days worth of bread every Friday.
So DID they? How’d they do on THIS test? Keep reading; v13:
13 In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. 14 And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. 15 When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, [“MAN HU?!”] “What IS it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. 16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, [v36 informs us that an omen was “the tenth part of an ephah”, but in OUR units of measurement today, an omer was about 2 quarts; half a gallon…] according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’” 17 And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. 18 But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. 19 And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” 20 But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. 21 Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.
22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, 23 he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; [this is the first time the Bible mentions, by NAME, the SABBATH, which will of course become one of God’s most important laws - #4 in His top 10!] bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” [only on Day 6] 24 So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. 25 Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. 26 Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.”
BUT, v27 now, “On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. 28 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will y’all refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? 29 See! The Lord has given you [graciously PROVIDED!] the Sabbath [a day of REST!]; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
So what’s the answer? Did they PASS God’s test?
No! In fact, they failed DOUBLY: first they OVER-collected bread, in v20, and tried to HOARD it, cuz they didn’t trust God to provide for them the NEXT day as well, and THEN, in v27, they got lazy and UNDER-collected on Day 6 so they didn’t have enough to eat on the SABBATH!
See, the manna was a TEST of Israel’s dependance on God. Moses will later remind them, in Deuteronomy ch8, after Israel has wandered for 40 years in the wilderness and just before they FINALLY enter the Promised Land, Moses warns them: “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna” (vv2-3) → God knows that what you and I need more than ANYTHING in life is HIM. We depend on Him in ways we don’t even REALIZE - for EVERYTHING! I like the meme that says, “People ask: “Do I need God to get into Heaven?” Bro: you need God to go to WAL-MART!” We are UTTERLY dependent on God for our life - we didn’t put us here on earth; GOD did! - we need Him for our breath - we didn’t make the oxygen in our lungs right now that we so desperately need; GOD did! - we need Him, as we’re reminded here in Exodus 16, for our FOOD - whether He rains it down miraculously from heaven or not, WE didn’t make the chicken on that Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich; GOD did! That’s the LORD’S chicken!
He is our Creator, our Sustainer, our PROVIDER - He is our EVERYTHING! And the manna here was God’s reminder of that: just how much Israel depended on Him for everything.
That’s why God instructs them here in vv31-36, to set aside and SAVE some manna for the generations to come as a visible REMINDER of their dependance on God, and his faithful provision. Because God knows - this is what Moses WARNS them about, in Deuteronomy 8: that once God leads them into the Promised Land - a land “flowing with milk and honey” - they’re gonna plant their vineyards and orchards and they’re gonna start fooling themselves into thinking they can just feed THEMSELVES, take care of THEMSELVES - like the American church today, they’re gonna get fat and complacent and FORGET their utter dependance on the Lord - that HE’s the one who CAUSES the fruit on their vines and trees to grow, HE’S the one who CAUSES their cows and bees to be productive; God’s the one MAKING the “milk and honey” flow. May we never FORGET it!
So God instructs them, in vv31-36:
31 Now the house of Israel called its name manna. [They called it, in Hebrew: “WHAT?!”] It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. [It’s a delicious FORETASTE of the sweetness of Canaan, the land of “milk and honey”, to which God is leading them. But remember: He won’t make it EASY. There’s a whole lot of WILDERNESS between Egypt and Canaan. And notice too: God doesn’t make their gathering of daily bread easy either; they had to BAKE or BOIL the manna to get it to taste like a honey-glazed Krispy Kreme donut; but before that, it was just this TINY seed, like coriander, the size of a little sesame seed. Can you imagine collecting a half gallon’s worth of SEED every day, off the morning dew, being careful not to mix in any of the desert DUST; no WONDER they got lazy and didn’t wanna collect twice as much on Fridays - it probably took HOURS! It was LABORIOUS.
Be honest: any of you ever feel like that in your morning QUIET TIME? Cuz that’s the symbolism here, for us; even Moses drew that spiritual parallel in Deut. 8: “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (v4) Brothers and sisters: we need to get in God’s word DAILY, like our lives DEPEND on it! That’s what the manna was intended to REMIND God’s people of; v32…]
32 Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” 33 And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord to be kept throughout your generations.” 34 As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony [that’s the ark of the covenant, that we’ll get to in a few weeks] to be kept. 35 The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. 36 (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)
In my office, I keep a printed copy of the original email I sent Pastor Gary, my predecessor here, forwarding him my resume and asking if West Hills by chance had any job openings. Because I never want to FORGET how humbling it was to move to St. Louis, knowing only my in-laws, with NO job, and no HOME, and a wife who was 3 months pregnant, and have to UTTERLY DEPEND on the Lord to provide. To have to TRUST Him that much. It was HARD, but it was GOOD. And I keep a copy so hopefully I never get fat and complacent and entitled, here in Canaan.
How about YOU? Can we get honest this morning: Some of you are depending on SUNDAY’S manna to sustain you Monday thru Saturday. And it’s no surprise you are spiritually malnourished. Jesus quoted Deut 8 to emphasize the importance of consuming God’s word DAILY: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every WORD that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4). Do you read it ALL, or just a 2-min daily devotional based on one encouraging verse from Philippians. Do you read JUDGES? Do you “LIVE on” His word from JEREMIAH?
Some of us are relying on YOUTH CAMP manna from 20 years ago to sustain you today. Jesus didn’t say “Whoever would be my disciple must raise their hand, walk the aisle, sign a pledge card, and just repeat this one simple prayer and you’re all SET… you can COAST now… the rest of life is just a waiting room for Heaven” - NO! He said, “Whoever would be my disciple must take up their cross DAILY and follow me!” (Lk 9:23)
SO much more we could say here, but to summarize: God graciously gives us His LAW, to guide us… then He lovingly gives us TESTS, to expose any remaining areas of faith-LESS-ness, and to STRENGTHEN our faith, our trust, our reliance on Him. And then FINALLY, and MOST importantly…
#3 - God gives us His INTERCESSOR (17:1-7).
I’ll explain, but let’s READ it, first, in ch17:
All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I DO with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 And he called the name of the place Massah [which means “testing”] and Meribah [which means “quarreling”], because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?””
I’ll be brief on this last point, because the thing that actually stands OUT about it is how comically REPETITIVE it is - speaking of which, I know I sound like a broken record cuz I keep repeating week after week how important it is - how much God emphasizes and ECHOES here in Exodus his command to REMEMBER. Because we all suffer from gospel amnesia; THAT’s why we need the PASSOVER - and it’s NT fulfillment: the Lord’s Supper - to help us remember God’s redemption thru the blood of the Lamb. THAT’s why we need the Feast of the Unleavened Bread - and it’s NT corollary: EASTER - to help us remember God’s deliverance at the Red Sea, the empty tomb… that’s why we need the SABBATH - to help us remember God’s faithful provision. We need all these memorials, these commemorations, these reminders, because we are so FORGETFUL.
Within weeks, maybe DAYS - we don’t know the exact timeline, but NOT LONG AT ALL - Israel has FORGOTTEN all about God’s provision for their thirst at Marah, and now in Rephidim they are repeating the exact same quarreling and grumbling as before. Actually, it’s even WORSE - ch17 uses a NEW Hebrew verb now, a STRONGER word here, that “suggest[s] Israel had reached a new level of hostility” (Ryken, 448).
But before we judge them, friends, we need to ask ourselves: don’t we do the exact same THING, all the TIME? How often do we stress, and worry, and get anxious - and not even over basic human NECESSITIES, mind you; laugh all you want at ISRAEL, but at least they were worried about dying of THIRST; WE lose sleep over whether or not the car’s gonna be back from the shop by Friday, or am I gonna have to SHARE a car with my wife all weekend long - a luxury that like 96% of the people who have ever walked the planet would KILL for. YOU worry about whether the salon’s gonna be able to squeeze you in on short notice, or are you gonna have to show up to the party with your hair looking like THAT - these are the kinds of things WE fret over.
And I don’t mean to trivialize, because I know some of y’all this morning really do have problems - not just “first-world” problems - but REAL problems.
You’re worried, waiting to hear back from the doctor, about whether your cancer is treatable or not.
You’re worried, working two jobs, wondering if it’s gonna be enough to get you out from under the DEBT you’re in.
You’re worried about your child’s SALVATION - you raised them in the church but speaking of being hungry and thirsty, they appear to have absolutely NO spiritual appetite, for the things of the Lord. Totally apathetic about church and faith and God.
Those are REAL worries. And guess what: when you’re out in the middle of the Middle Eastern desert, going even just a day or two without water becomes a REAL worry. But friends, the question still remains: when it comes to our real worries, our real NEEDS, are we gonna trust God to REALLY provide? Can we look BACK, in our past, our RECENT past, and see the evidence of His past faithfulness, as encouragement in the present, that He will surely come through again, provide again?
Friends: if you can look back and see God’s provision of his Son JESUS, to meet your GREATEST need, your deep, spiritual need for salvation, for forgiveness of sin, for reconciliation with God your Father, for eternal LIFE - if God has provided for you in THAT way, that most important of ALL ways! - then you can have absolute confidence He will provide for whatever lesser - trivial or real need - you may be experiencing right now. As Paul puts it in Romans 8: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” ALL THINGS, Church!
Israel DOUBTS here. AGAIN, for a FOURTH time, in just THREE chapters. Once again, they prove to be faith-LESS. But God doesn’t give UP on them; “even if we are faithless, Heremains faithful”. And THIS time, He provides them with an INTERCESSOR, a mediator: Moses.
God calls him to “Pass on before the people…”
He gave them His Law - they IGNORED it.
He gave them His TEST - they FAILED it.
So NOW, God gives them His ambassador, his divine representative OF God, TO His people, MOSES, to strike the rock and bring forth water FOR them. It’s a WEIRD passage, so thank God He interpreted it FOR us, in 1 Corinthians ch10; Paul explains: “our ancestors were all under the cloud and they all passed through the sea. [the EXODUS] 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food [that’s the MANNA] 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was CHRIST. ” (vv1-4)
We’ve seen all along how Moses was a type, a foreshadowing of CHRIST, the better Moses who would deliver US by interceding for us by his death in our place on the cross. But now, Paul tells us, not only does MOSES point us ahead to Jesus, but even the ROCK at Meribah does: Jesus, who would be STRUCK, for OUR sake, in order to pour forth “streams of living water… welling up to eternal life”, for us. Jesus said, “whoever drinks the water that I give them will never thirst.” (Jn 4:14)
Friends: HE is the log, who can redeem all our bitterness and make it sweet. HE is the “bread of life who came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever” (Jn 6:51). HE is the rock, struck for us, to provide us with the only water that can quench us ETERNALLY - “Come to me, and you’ll NEVER thirst again”, Jesus promised.
Have you TASTED - have you EATEN, and drunk - tasted and seen that the Lord is GOOD. That He is a faithful provider. And that He’ll NEVER let you down. Let’s pray…